A Sum of His Parts
by ariel2me
Summary: "I will not be a page on someone else's history book." In the last days of his reign before Shireen ascends to the throne, Stannis oversees the writing of the history of his reign and his fight for the throne. Inspired by, what else, that new got s4 trailer :D


"You have given too much prominence to the battle against the wildlings," Stannis said, disapproving.

"But Your Grace, that is the site of one of your biggest triumphs," Maester Pylos protested. "Outnumbered by the thousands, your men managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. It was a glorious victory and a –"

"That is not how it was! We were outnumbered, yes, but we had better weapon. My men were better trained, and we had the advantage of surprise. And we were never on the verge of defeat. Not that time."

They had been on the verge of defeat at other times. Against the Others. Against the long, cold nights that seemed to never end. Against the dragons.

A deep, hacking cough interrupted Stannis. Shireen glanced at the maester and gave him a nod. Pylos gathered the parchments scattered on the bed and made a move to leave.

"Leave them," Stannis commanded, between his coughs. "I still need to examine your account of the battle for Winterfell."

After Pylos left the room, Stannis continued his grumbling. "I have told Pylos over and over again that this must be an accurate rendering of events as they transpired. I do not want a companion piece to Daeron's vain-glorious account of his conquest of Dorne. I do not want an air-brushed fairy tale of how the brave Aegon and his two beautiful warrior sisters conquered Westeros."

It was unprecedented, what the king wanted, Maester Pylos had confided to Shireen. "Why would His Grace want to be remembered for his less-than-glorious doings, the stuff better forgotten?"

_Because the truth matters_, her father would have said. Especially the hard truths. The truth was all they had at the end of the day.

And for atonement as well, Shireen thought. But she knew her father would never admit to this motivation, even to himself, let alone to others.

"Maester Pylos is doing his best, Father. But memory fades."

"Not mine. If every battle is '_a great triumph'_, then that phrase has lost all its meaning. The battle against the wildlings was nothing compared to our long fight against the Others, the true enemy. To write it as if the two are on the same footing is a lie. A great lie. It must be taken out."

"Of course it will be taken out. I will tell Maester Pylos. You must not overtire yourself. Remember what the maesters said."

There was a long silence when neither of them spoke. Shireen wondered if her father was annoyed by her reminder.

When he spoke, he turned his face to the wall, avoiding her gaze. "I was afraid that I would die too soon, that I would leave you a child still, with the burden of the throne, or worse, while the throne still needed to be fought for."

"You didn't," Shireen said gently, kissing his brow.

He turned to face her. "Now I fear I have overstayed my welcome." He took her hand, examining the wrinkles and the spots. "You are an old woman, Shireen." He sounded surprised, as if age had caught them both by surprise, as if the years were snow that had melted away too quickly.

She wanted to laugh. She wanted to cry. Being her father's daughter, Shireen did neither, at least not in front of her father. "Oh Father! I am not yet fifty."

"Soon you will be. You have spent too long as a queen-in-waiting. You have done enough preparing for a lifetime. It's time."

This time, she _did_ cry out. "No! Not yet." She was a mother and a grandmother, yet the thought of losing her last remaining parent was still too much to bear.

Her father regarded her carefully. "I was speaking of abdication. I am too weary to sit the Iron Throne. It is now your turn to carry the burden."

He was not talking of death. Shireen breathed a sigh of relief.

"In any case, I do not intend to die until this task is completed. I do not trust Pylos not to exaggerate and overstate the extent of our triumphs and our victories, and understate or even leave out our defeats and our follies."

_"I will not be a page on someone else's history book_," Shireen had heard her father insisting, more than once, during the long, dark years of the war.

_"I do not want to be a footnote to history, the forgotten loser, the villainous enemy depicted with lies and more lies in history as written by the victors_," she had understood him to mean at the time. Her father had wanted to be the one shaping events, making history, determining his own fate and the fate of the realm.

Perhaps he _had_ meant it as that, then. Perhaps he still partly meant it as that, now. But what her father wanted most of all, now, close to the end, was for history to reflect events in all its complications and complexities. The good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, the virtues and the sins.

Why should that surprise her? Her father, after all, had held on to this maxim like a lifeline – that a good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad the good. A man is a sum of his parts, good _and_ bad, and neither part could be erased, consigned to oblivion, forgotten.

Her father was right to want to see the task to completion before his death. If it were left to her, Shireen was not certain she could be as clear-eyed, as brutally honest and as mercilessly truthful about her father's shortcomings. Love - that ever-present pesky irritant, as her father had once called it - would get in the way.


End file.
